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When it comes to financial statement “going concern” warnings, you should be as concerned about too many as some are about too few.

But you can count on one thing:

The controversy over how and when auditors issue “going concern” qualifications is not going away.

Research firm Audit Analytics recently analyzed auditor opinions filed with the SEC as of May 31, 2011 that were qualified by an uncertainty regarding the going concern assumption (“going concerns”). Their report summarizes the trend since 2000.

In spite of numerous media reports encouraging optimism - new "going concern" qualifications appear to be trending to the lowest number in 11 years and the number of companies leaving the population by filing a clean audit opinion after a prior qualification appears to be increasing – a deeper reading delivers a more troubling picture.

Therefore, the number of going concerns for 2010 year end is expected to be 119 less than the amount received for 2009. Most of this drop, however, is not due to improved company performance, but company attrition from the prior year’s going concern population. Analysis of the 2,994 companies that filed a going concern in 2009 found that 172 of these companies filed a termination of registration with the SEC. Therefore, new going concerns must have outpaced the terminations…

In addition to new going concerns, Audit Analytics identified companies that filed a going concern one year but not the following year. A small number of these companies filed a subsequent clean audit opinion, but most of these companies stopped filing audit opinions altogether.